Quote of the day

"I have always suspected that whoever came up with the notion that you lose most of your body heat through your head and wrists never took a dump in the woods on a cold day."




Peter

Ooh! A hissy-fit!

If you'd like to see a classic example of how not to react to online reports or comments about you or your work, click over to this morning's Mad Genius Club article, in which fellow author Amanda Green mentioned another author's views on whether authors should be paid royalties for the sales of used copies of their books.  That author promptly raised Cain in the comments below the article, leading to a lot of fairly succinct interaction with other authors, readers and fans.

It's a wonderful example of what happens when you go ballistic about something that wasn't worth it in the first place.  The second author has now probably done permanent damage to her reputation;  and since the Internet is forever, her comments are going to be left up there for all the world to find whenever they do a search on her name.  I think she may come to regret them.

I've been the victim of some pretty scurrilous comments on the Internet, particularly over the boycott of Tor Books for which I called last year.  I had a choice.  I could reply to the slanders, which would merely fan the flames and encourage their nonsense;  or I could make fun of some, and ignore the rest, and do something more productive.  I chose the latter course.  The idiots kept on yammering, of course, but only to each other, because no-one else was paying any attention to them.  Without new fuel to stoke up their indignation, things died down soon enough, as they usually do.

Oh, well . . . that's entertainment!

Peter

Al Qaeda, ISIL and jihadist tactics in Syria

I've come across several thought-provoking analyses of what's happening in the fundamentalist Islamic terrorist world at the moment, and the current tactics being implemented in Syria.

First, War On The Rocks reports on 'The Islamic State vs. al-Qaeda: The War within the Jihadist Movement'.  Here's a brief excerpt from a long and detailed article.

The post-Arab Spring period has seen extraordinary growth in the global jihadist movement. In addition to the Islamic State seizing a vast swathe of territory spanning Syria and Iraq and al-Qaeda establishing itself as a potent military force in the Syrian civil war, instability and unfulfilled expectations in numerous countries — including Egypt, Libya, Mali, Tunisia, and Yemen — have presented jihadists with unprecedented opportunities.

But even as the jihadist movement experiences rapid growth, it has also endured unprecedented internal turmoil. The Islamic State’s emergence marks the first time that leadership over the global jihadist movement has been seriously contested. Since that group’s expulsion from the al-Qaeda network in February 2014, a fierce competition between the Islamic State and al-Qaeda has defined the militant landscape. The United States has an opportunity to exploit and aggravate fissures within the jihadist community, but to do so successfully, it is essential to understand the differences in the modus operandi of these two rival jihadist groups.

Two Models of Revolutionary Warfare

Though al-Qaeda and the Islamic State share the same ultimate goal — establishing a global caliphate ruled by an austere version of sharia (Islamic law) — each group maintains a distinct approach to revolutionary warfare. Al-Qaeda has come to favor covert expansion, unacknowledged affiliates, and a relatively quiet organizational strategy designed to carefully build a larger base of support before engaging in open warfare with its foes. By contrast, the Islamic State believes that the time for a broader military confrontation has already arrived, and has loudly disseminated its propaganda to rally as many soldiers as possible to its cause. The group combines shocking violence with an effective propaganda apparatus in an effort to quickly build its base of support.

The Maoist and focoist schools of revolutionary thought provide a useful framework for understanding these groups’ differing strategies. Al-Qaeda exhibits a revolutionary strategy that is both implicitly and explicitly based on the works of Mao Tse-tung, while the Islamic State’s approach is more consonant with the focoist writings of Ernesto “Che” Guevara and Régis Debray.

There's much more at the link, including a detailed analysis of how these different approaches are playing out in practice.

Next, from the Foreign Military Studies Office of the US Army comes a very interesting article titled 'Combat in Cities: The Chechen Experience in Syria' (link is to an Adobe Acrobat document in .PDF format).  It analyzes how Chechen Muslim fundamentalist terrorists went to Syria to support like-minded terror movements there, and how they took with them the lessons they learned in urban combat against Russian forces during the 1990's and 2000's.  Here's a brief excerpt from a long and detailed article.

Currently, at least three Chechen “battalions” are engaged in fighting against the Syrian government, and some individual combatants are part of ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant). These Chechen are sharing their combat-in-cities tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) with other rebel groups trying to overthrow the Syrian and Iraqi governments.

. . .

... some of the most notable Chechens fighting in Syria and Iraq are not technically Chechen but Kists from the Republic of Georgia’s Pankisi Valley and Gorge. The Kists are a close relation to the Chechens and are often referred to as cousins. During the wars with Russia, the Pankisi Valley was a refugee destination but also a sanctuary or “R&R” location for Chechen combatants taking a break from the fight up north ... In addition, it was a way station for foreign fighters seeking to get to Chechnya. The fact that important Chechen combatants fighting in Syria and Iraq are not even Chechen but rather Kist attests to the spread of Chechen influence and also TTPs beyond Chechnya, beyond the Caucasus, and now into the Middle East.

. . .

The Chechens are not present in overwhelming numbers anywhere in Syria or Iraq, nor in ISIL. Nor are all Chechen combatants in Syria former combatants in Chechnya, but they are a product of the Chechen diaspora or have taken the moniker of “Chechen” — like Salah al-Din Shishani and Umar Shishani. However, they have “street cred” and a reputation to maintain. They represent a significant fighting capability with a strong track record in a combat force that is learning to fight by doing it and then taking what has worked since the initial street fights of Grozny in December and January 1994 to advance their ability in the current struggle for Syria and Iraq.

Again, there's much more at the link, including considerable detail about Chechen 'doctrine' in how to conduct urban guerrilla operations.  Speaking from my own experience in urban security operations (in a different part of the world, to be sure, and under rather different circumstances), the points made by the article ring true.

A third, older article is interesting because it shows how Israel re-learned the lessons of the Battle of Stalingrad and other urban fights during the Second World War.  Those same lessons were also learned in Chechnya by both sides of the conflict, and are now being applied in Syria by all sides as well.  In his essay 'Lethal Theory' (link is to an Adobe Acrobat document in .PDF format), Eyal Weizman analyzes the tactics used by the Israeli Defense Force in its fight in the city of Nablus in 2002.  Despite his left-wing, anti-war bias, his article is very interesting from a tactical point of view.  Here's a very brief excerpt, in which he quotes (in italics) Aviv Kokhavi, who at the time was the Commanding Officer of the Paratrooper Brigade.

This space that you look at, this room that you look at, is nothing but your interpretation of it. Now, you can stretch the boundaries of your interpretation, but not in an unlimited fashion, after all, it must be bound by physics, as it contains buildings and alleys. The question is, how do you interpret the alley? Do you interpret the alley as a place, like every architect and every town planner does, to walk through, or do you interpret the alley as a place forbidden to walk through? This depends only on interpretation. We interpreted the alley as a place forbidden to walk through, and the door as a place forbidden to pass through, and the window as a place forbidden to look through, because a weapon awaits us in the alley, and a booby trap awaits us behind the doors. This is because the enemy interprets space in a traditional, classical manner, and I do not want to obey this interpretation and fall into his traps. Not only do I not want to fall into his traps, I want to surprise him! This is the essence of war. I need to win. I need to emerge from an unexpected place. And this is what we tried to do.

This is why we opted for the methodology of moving through walls ... Like a worm that eats its way forward, emerging at points and then disappearing. We were thus moving from the interior of homes to their exterior in a surprising manner and in places we were not expected, arriving from behind and hitting the enemy that awaited us behind a corner ... Because it was the first time that this methodology was tested [at such a scale], during the operation itself we were learning how to adjust ourselves to the relevant urban space, and similarly, how to adjust the relevant urban space to our needs ... We took this microtactical practice [of moving through walls] and turned it into a method, and thanks to this method, we were able to interpret the whole space differently! ... I said to my troops, "Friends! This is not a matter of your choice! There is no other way of moving! If until now you were used to moving along roads and sidewalks, forget it! From now on we all walk through walls!"

. . .

A survey conducted after the battle by the Palestinian architect Nurhan Abujidi showed that more than half of the buildings in the old city center of Nablus had routes forced through them, resulting in anywhere from one to eight openings in their walls, floors, or ceilings, which created several haphazard crossroutes that she could not understand as describing simple linear progression, and which indicated to her a very chaotic maneuver without a clear direction.

For anyone who might imagine that moving through walls is a relatively "gentle" form of warfare, the following is a description of the sequence of the events: Soldiers assemble behind a wall. Using explosives or a large hammer, they break a hole large enough to pass through. Their charge through the wall is sometimes preceded by stun grenades or a few random shots into what is most often a private living room occupied by unsuspecting civilians. When the soldiers have passed through the party wall, the occupants are assembled and locked inside one of the rooms, where they are made to remain - sometimes for several days - until the operation is concluded, often without water, toilet, food, or medicine.

More at the link.

A fourth article, 'Nakatomi Space' at BldgBlog, analyzes Weizman's report in terms of the movie 'Die Hard'.  It's an interesting alternate perspective, and I found it worthwhile.

It's reported that all sides in the Syrian conflict are now using similar urban warfare techniques (although they usually kill anyone they come across, civilian or fighter, rather than hold them captive).  This has implications for counter-terrorism training and operations in the USA as well.  Are our security forces (including local and regional police forces) trained to expect terrorists to move through buildings in this way?  And are they trained to avoid doors, windows, etc. themselves?  After all, terrorists who've experienced this sort of urban combat will be trying to kill them as they use conventional openings.  It's a serious risk.

I recommend all four articles mentioned above.  They contain a lot of useful food for thought.

Peter

Disbelievin' Daddy

Too cute!

I wonder if she'll apologize for doubting him when she grows up?  I somehow doubt it . . .




Peter

An inevitable response to the robot revolution?

We've spoken more than once in these pages about the danger posed by automation to the traditional job market, most recently earlier this month.  Now the Telegraph notes that more and more people in the UK are classified - or classifying themselves - as 'self-employed', so much so that they're expected to overtake employment in the public sector before long.

For most of the industrial era, there were really only two big blocs in the workforce: public [i.e. government] and private sector employees. There were a few self-employed people – a few company directors, some builders and the odd taxi driver. But the numbers were not huge.

Since the crash of 2008, that has all started to change dramatically. If you go back all the way to 1975, only 8.7pc of the workforce [in the UK] worked for themselves. By 2008, that had risen to about 12pc. Ever since, it has started to accelerate rapidly, growing to close on 16pc of the workforce now. The total grew as much in seven years as it did in the three decades before that. But here is the really interesting point: The self-employed may soon overtake the public sector ... It could happen by the end of this year, or perhaps next. At the very least, it looks inevitable that it will have happened before the end of the decade.

Indeed, the rate at which the gap is closing may well start to accelerate. The “sharing” economy, pioneered by the likes of Uber and Airbnb, is opening up vast new opportunities for working for yourself; so is the spread of broadband, and well-funded start-ups – all those “unicorns”, the billion-plus dollar start-ups – love to take on lots of freelancers and don’t object to paying them pretty well. At first the rise in self-employment could be dismissed as largely the result of the recession of 2008/9. Lots of laid-off workers were “freelancing” for a while as they looked for a new permanent job. But the labour market is incredibly buoyant, with jobs being created in record numbers. That tells us that most of them are deliberately choosing self-employment.

Meanwhile, little by little, but admittedly not fast enough, the public sector is getting smaller.

. . .

The rise of the “gig economy” will prove to be a powerful social trend, both in the UK and in most of the developed work. It shows no sign of slowing down – and it is going to impact the economy and the political system far more than most people yet realise.

There's more at the link.

I don't know whether there are any comparable statistical studies of the US workforce.  We read a great deal about the seemingly vast numbers 'not in the labor force', as CNS News reported earlier this month.

The number of Americans not in the labor force last month totaled 94,103,000 ... In December, according to the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics, the nation’s civilian noninstitutional population, consisting of all people 16 or older who were not in the military or an institution, reached 251,936,000. Of those, 157,833,000 participated in the labor force by either holding a job or actively seeking one.

. . .

Ahead of this month's unemployment numbers, the Labor Department released an article examining why people who are not in the labor force are not working.

It found that in 2014, 87.4 million people 16 years and older neither worked nor looked for work at any time during that year.

Of this group, 38.5 million people reported retirement as the main reason for not working. About 16.3 million people were ill or had a disability, and 16.0 million were attending school. Another 13.5 million people cited home responsibilities as the main reason for not working in 2014, and 3.1 million individuals gave “other reasons.”

Again, more at the link.

One wonders how many of those 95-million-odd people 'not in the labor force' were being 'economical with the truth' and simply not reporting their self-employed status and/or self-employment-derived income.  Is this why the IRS is constantly seeking more information from potential employers, sales outlets, etc. about ways in which individuals might be making money without declaring it as income?  I know eBay sellers have come under greatly increased scrutiny, and transactions using services such as PayPal and Western Union are under the microscope too.  However, it's more difficult to do that in the 'black economy', where cash is king.  I know of several building contractors, lawn and yard maintenance operators, etc. who have no business premises at all.  They operate over the phone and out of pickup trucks and trailers, arriving to do a job, accepting only cash in payment, and heading off to the next job as soon as they finish yours.  I daresay few of them pay tax on all of their income.  Considering the perennial and monumental waste of money by our government, I can't pretend to be too upset at the thought.

(This is probably what's behind some of the calls to do away with cash altogether, forcing all transactions into electronic form through one or more bank accounts.  If every transaction can be traced, the 'black economy' would be strangled.  As far as I'm concerned, long live cash!  We don't need an even bigger Big Brother, thank you very much!)

Peter

Friends

I've been struck, yet again, by the bonds of friendship that connect Miss D., myself and our circle of friends.  The most recent manifestation has been the preparations going on at our new home to get it ready for us to move into at the end of the month.  Lawdog, Old NFO and Phlegmmy in Texas, plus Oleg and another non-blogging friend here in Nashville (yes, Al, that means you!), have busted their joint and several guts for us, putting us up while we closed on the house and ordered what we needed, offering to lay our new laminate flooring for us to save us the cost of using professionals, recommending a contractor and helping to check on the work he's doing while we're not in town, cashing a check for us when we had to get our hands on some folding green stuff in a hurry, helping us to pack and load stuff to take south, looking after our cat while we were traveling . . . there's a long, long list.  One reader of this blog even made a special trip from another town an hour away to help load my pickup for our recent trip south.  Now that's a dedicated supporter!  Thanks for literally going the extra several dozen miles for us, buddy.

They've made our lives so much easier that I truly don't think we could have done everything without them - but they shrug it off lightly.  "That's what friends are for!"  Well, yes, they are, and I hope Miss D. and I have been, and will continue to be, that sort of friend to them as well:  but sadly, such friends aren't all that common any more.  When I look at the 'friendships' that seem prevalent among the younger generation, I sometimes wonder what went wrong.  So many of them are based on the feelings of the moment rather than what I'd consider lasting values.  There's no sense that a friend is someone you'd do almost anything for and/or with;  instead, it's someone who's done - or may do - something for you, so you do - or may do - something for them in order to 'keep them sweet'.  It's based on "You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" instead of "Rain or shine, whatever happens, we're friends".  The military concept of a 'foxhole buddy' is one that I fear would seem utterly alien to those of today's generation.  I hope I'm wrong . . . but I fear I'm not.

I wonder whether perhaps the modern understanding of 'friendship' has changed because so few people today are challenged to go beyond themselves, to learn their limitations and then push themselves to exceed them, to put their lives on the line for a higher cause?  "Duty, honor, country" or the true, solemn meaning of the Pledge of Allegiance are lost in background noise today, historical artefacts that arouse quizzical curiosity rather than a heartfelt response.  After the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, patriotic Americans in their millions rushed to join the Armed Forces, so much so that many had to be turned away;  but after the 9/11 attacks, whilst some patriotic Americans did likewise, far, far more did not.  It's as if there was no longer a sense that an attack on our country was an attack on us all.  It was "someone else's job" to respond.  It's telling that many of our friends are veterans of military service.  It shows.

I think this is one area where those who enjoy firearms have an edge over the rest of the country.  It's not a brash, gung-ho, "in-your-face" sort of thing;  rather, it's an appreciation for self-reliance, for putting meat on the table, defending the family and the homeland, putting others ahead of oneself.  I see this time and time again at the range.  Novices will be identified by regulars, who'll often go out of their way to help them fire their first shots, offer them the use of their own firearms to "try something new", and encourage them.  When training disabled and handicapped shooters, I've been struck by how many others are willing to help once they realize what I'm trying to accomplish.  Some even sponsor or donate firearms for the use of such shooters (the latest example was just last week, when a very generous reader of this blog donated a .22LR pistol to 'the cause').  It's so common in the so-called 'gun culture' that I now regard it as a normal feature of the landscape, nothing out of the ordinary or unusual;  but in other segments of society, other more modern pursuits, it is unusual - very much so.  That sort of selflessness, openness and acceptance isn't so common any more, despite (or perhaps because of) all 'community organizers' can do.

I certainly see that in our annual Blogorado gatherings out West.  Several dozen bloggers gather by invitation at a private location every year to enjoy a long weekend of great food, interesting beverages, hours and hours of shooting (I have no idea how many thousands of rounds we expend, but it's got to be a long way into five figures!), and hours and hours of conversation and 'show-and-tell' around the fire at night.  Everyone has a ball (even if it's a bowling ball fired from a blackpowder mortar!).  Even first-timers are bowled over by the camaraderie.  All the bloggers I mentioned in the first paragraph are Blogorado veterans, and I'm sure most will agree with me that the bond between us is now equal to that of family or close blood kin.  As Matt G. puts it, we're "Tribe".  We've grown that close.  If they need help burying a body, Miss D. and I will be there with shovels in less time than it takes to tell it.  After the digging, Miss D. will feed them and I'll replenish their ammo stocks!

A heartfelt "Thank you!" to all our friends for being that sort of friend to us, too.  You're a blessing.

Peter

NSFW facepalm

I snorted tea through my nose when I found this pictorial variation on a well-known song lyric over at By Other Means.  It's not safe for work, but it's very funny!  Click over there and enjoy it for yourself.

(If you don't know the original earworm song, try this video on YouTube.)




Peter

Doofus Of The Day #875

This morning's award goes to an Italian woman.

A middle-aged woman in Italy was forced to ask the fire brigade for help after she lost the keys to her chastity belt.

The woman, who has not been named under Italian privacy law, turned up at a fire station on Wednesday morning in Padua, in Italy’s Veneto region, and said she needed help with a lock she could not open.

Firefighters, believing she had locked herself out of her house, began asking for details about where she lived.

It was only then that the woman revealed the specific nature of the problem, pulling up a jumper to reveal an iron chastity belt.

“I’ve lost the keys to a lock and I can no longer open it,” she told a group of stunned firefighters at the fire station in San Fidenzio.

. . .

The woman explained she had chosen to wear the belt to prevent herself from embarking on a sexual relationship.

There's more at the link.

They do say that persistence is the key to success, but I'm not sure whether that would have been entirely true in this case - the situation was somewhat impenetrable, after all!  Her pleas for help must have been truly e-lock-quent . . .




Peter

So much for Al Gore

Remember Al Gore's claim that polar bears would drown because of global warming?

Not so fast.

Former Vice President Al Gore shocked Americans in “An Inconvenient Truth” when he said polar bears were drowning because global warming was melting Arctic sea ice, but now a new study shows that polar bears did just fine even when there was no ice covering the Arctic.

Scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the University of Alaska, Fairbanks released a study claiming the “stratigraphic record of the last 1.5 [million years] indicates that no marine species’ extinction events occurred despite major climate oscillations,” including periods where the Arctic was completely ice-free in summertime.

. . .

The scientists found that contrary to claims made by Gore in his 2006 film, polar bears have adapted to past warm periods. This is in line with Cronin’s work which has found that polar bears have been a genetically-distinct species long enough to have survived past periods where the Arctic had little to no ice.

The new study not only finds polar bears survived ice-free periods in the Arctic, but there’s no evidence of any other marine species going extinct over the last 1.5 million years. That even goes for walruses, which have made news lately for massive beachings in the Arctic some say are being driven by global warming.

What’s most interesting is that they also claim species were likely worse off during periods when the Arctic and neighboring continents were covered by massive ice sheets.

There's more at the link.

Yet again, the proponents of anthropogenic global warming and/or climate change are shown to be full of it.  Isn't it long gone time for them to just shut up?  Yeah, yeah, I know . . . they're true believers.  They won't be silenced by something as irrelevant as facts.  As Al Gore himself said:

When you have the facts on your side, argue the facts. When you have the law on your side, argue the law. When you have neither, holler.

He's been doing just that for a long, long time . . . and making a lot of money off of credulous fools by doing so.

Peter

Doofus Of The Day #874

Today's award goes to a distillery in England.

A group of hipster gin makers came close to creating chaos after they accidentally made mustard gas while trying to concoct a new flavour.

Workers from Sipsmith distillery, in Chiswick, west London, were attempting to create a mustard-flavoured drink but instead made the dangerous chemical agent, famous for its devastating use in World War One.

Kit Clancy, assistant distiller at Sipsmith, said: 'There was a near disaster. What the guys actually produced was in effect mustard gas. The distillery was evacuated. That one wasn't made again.'

There's more at the link.

I don't think they issue licenses to make that stuff any more . . . certainly not during peacetime!

Seriously, though;  while reading more for this blog post, I found that the distillery's blog has a lot of interesting articles, from 'British Drinking Traditions: A Brief History of Winter Warmers', to 'Inside London’s Historic Gin Shops', to 'Around the World in 80 Gins: Swiss Gin' and more.  It's worth a look if you're that way inclined.

Peter

For a sneak peek . . .

. . . at the corner of our new living-room in Texas, take a look at Old NFO's post this morning.  He helped Lawdog and another buddy to scrape and prepare the concrete floor for the installation of laminate flooring over the next few days.

Thanks, NFO!  Given your bad back, and the fact that you're still settling into your own home, that was truly going above and beyond the call of duty.  Miss D. and I will have to find you a nice bottle to compensate you for your efforts.  (We'll do the same for the others, of course, but given your rarefied tastes in uisge beatha, we'll make a special effort.)

Peter

Self-defense: fancy hardware is NOT the solution

I've had occasion in recent weeks to correspond with several former students of mine, disabled individuals whom I taught to handle a firearm for their own security.  Such people are often targeted by predators because they appear almost defenseless.  After all, if one dumps someone out of their wheelchair, and they aren't capable of getting up unaided, they're at one's mercy . . . right?  That's where situational awareness and concealed firearms come in very handy.  If you can see the attack coming, you can prepare for it;  and as long as your handgun is positioned where you can get at it in a hurry, even when rolling on the ground, you can do something about the attack.

My correspondents have been upset by the number of individuals trying to sell them "gizmos" to hang on their defensive handguns.  They rightly point out that technological aids are just that - aids;  they're meant to help you solve the problem, but in and of themselves they can't do it.  They can only enhance basic skills that you already have.  If you don't have those skills, there's nothing for them to enhance!

The problem is, too many people rely on "gizmos" for their defense (and gunshops and suppliers make a lot of money selling them).  People hang lights and lasers on their handgun;  they carry it in a "racegun" style holster, designed for competition rather than to keep the firearm safe and secure and available at all times;  they insist on loading it with the latest, most-hyped super-duper felon-stopper magnum-blaster ammunition (see my comments in this article about that nonsense!);  yet they almost never actually practice with it, and when they do, it's typically in a non-defensive environment where they just fire a few rounds into a stationary paper target at a known distance.

To take just one example of how such ignorance affects them:  they have little or no idea how a firearm's noise and blast will affect them in the real world if they ever have to use it the hard way.  You like carrying a .357 Magnum revolver or a .40 Smith & Wesson pistol for defensive use, or you plan to use a shotgun for home defense?  Great . . . but if you fire any of those firearms with full-house  ammunition inside the hallway of your home, without any hearing protection, you're going to be very deaf for a long time thereafter.  You'll almost certainly suffer some degree of permanent hearing damage.  You certainly won't be able to hear what the intruder's doing after you fire your first shot.  (Of course, any handgun - any firearm of any type, for that matter - will deafen you when fired indoors, but some will deafen you a lot more than others.)  This is why I keep a set of electronic hearing protectors next to my firearm on the nightstand next to my bed.  It's a matter of a moment's work to put them on before I investigate "things that go bump in the night".  Not only will they protect my hearing from gunfire, they'll actually amplify ambient sounds to help me hear and identify them more easily.

I have no problem at all with using appropriate technological aids.  I have Crimson Trace lasers on several of my handguns, and expect to fit them to others as and when I can afford them.  I have lights on some of the handguns I use for home defense.  I'll take any help I can get, thank you very much!  Nevertheless, the brutal reality of self-defense is that unless you're capable of putting the bullets where they need to go, it doesn't much matter what round you use, or whether you use the gun's sights or an aftermarket laser sight to put them there.  The basics come first.  All the technological whiz-bangs in the world can't help you if you don't have the basics down pat.

I discussed how to train oneself or others so that even the lowly .22LR round is a viable defensive cartridge.  Take a look at the training program I outlined there (which can be accomplished using BB or airsoft handguns, at minimal cost).  Over the course of a few months to a year, at an expenditure of at most $100-$150, you can develop your shooting skills - without using a single technological aid of any description - to the point where you can put 7 out of 10 rounds, rapid fire, into the target area of an attacker, at five to ten yards' range, every single time.  You'll spend less to master that skill than you will to buy a laser sight for your handgun;  and after you master it, any ammunition you use for defense is likely to prove effective, because shot placement is the primary determinant of bullet effectiveness.  A .44 Magnum hollowpoint in the lower leg or foot will make some (not all) attackers limp, and make them angry.  It won't necessarily stop the threat they pose.  A simple .22LR round in the cerebellum or brain stem will shut down any attacker, every time.  No doubt about it.

Learn the basics and master them before worrying about new tools for your self-defense toolbox.

Peter

A brief road trip

Miss D. and I are in Birmingham, Alabama tonight, visiting Joe, our favorite gunsmith.  Joe's been working on a few guns for me, and I wanted to pick them up before we left for Texas.  He'll hold on to a couple more firearms for extended modifications, and we'll pick them up during Blogorado in October this year.

The three-hour ride down from Nashville was pleasant enough, but driving through busy Nashville and Birmingham streets has convinced me yet again (not that I needed confirmation) that I'm just not happy any more in a big city.  There are too many people, too much traffic, and too much overcrowding.  I need wider, more open spaces where a man can see the horizons miles away, smell air that isn't a turgidly blended soup of vehicle exhausts, sweaty human bodies and sundry city fumes, and hear the birds sing without having to filter out the sounds of passing traffic.  Our Texas move can't happen too soon for me.

I'll try to put up a post or two before we return to Nashville in the morning.  Meanwhile, sleep well, y'all.  I'm off to do the same.

Peter

Flooring for an enclosed-porch "man cave"

As part of our preparations for moving into our new home, we have a contractor fixing a few flaws and modifying a few features.  One of them is an enclosed porch at one corner of the house.  Whoever first enclosed it (I'm not sure if it was the previous owners, or someone before them) did an absolutely horrible job, mainly to provide shelter for their dogs (who proceeded to pee all over it, leaving an unmistakable odor behind them).  The contractor has ripped out all the old enclosure work and chemically cleaned the floor and walls.  He's re-framing the porch, insulating it, and installing exterior siding and sheet rock interior walls, as well as a proper ceiling.  It's not very large (a little under 100 square feet), but that'll be big enough to serve as my office and "man cave".

Because the room started life as a porch, and so isn't fitted for central air-conditioning or heating (I'll use a window-mounted unit), I wanted to add a layer of insulation to the floor as well.  After a lot of scouring around the Internet, I settled on a rubber flooring known as 'Elephant Bark'.  It's widely used in gymnasiums, and in areas where hard-wearing flooring is required that's also relatively easy on the feet.

The cost per square foot is comparable to what we're paying for laminate flooring, and it doesn't have to be glued down - it can be laid out using double-sided tape, so that it can be taken up and re-used elsewhere if necessary.  It should also be proof against things like gun-cleaning chemicals, so I can put my workbench against one wall.  I've ordered enough to cover the floor, and it's on the way to our new home as I write these words.  It should be ready by the time we arrive.  I'll buy an area rug to put in the center of the floor, to lend a little tone to proceedings.

It's been a lot of fun researching all the bits and pieces we want to do to the house, and deciding what needed to be done before we moved in and what should be put off until we'd rebuilt our savings.  (A back deck or porch extension is on the latter list, as is getting rid of the so-called 'popcorn ceilings' and replacing them with smooth sheet rock.)  We've been blessed to find a good contractor who's charging us a very reasonable price to get the house ready for us.

I'm looking forward to moving into our own home in two weeks' time.  After almost six years of marriage and rented accommodation, it's overdue.

Peter

Truth, propaganda and political correctness

Now and again two or three articles will come out that serendipitously reinforce and complement one another, each helping the other(s) to make its point more strongly.  I found that this month with a blog post from Sarah Hoyt, preceded by an article at Mises Daily.

Sarah makes the point that truth will out, regardless of attempts to disguise it.  (Bold, underlined text is my emphasis.)

Truth is all the more powerful, when everyone with power and authority has been denying it, and then one person dares tell the truth.  Suddenly, the guy on the street who is tired of being told that they are wrong, and that they should believe what they’re told and not what they see with their lying eyes, has someone tell them that what they see is true.

. . .

We’re seeing this in the United States with Trump.  Maybe Trump will turn out (somehow) to be a pragmatic ruler, but make no mistake, he will be a RULER, not a leader, because he has no concept of limits or of individual rights.  His concept is of socialism, only more national.  But people here are so tired of being told that the United States is the worst thing ever, when they see it isn’t, that they are willing to accept even an outright socialist, if he’ll just assure them they’re not going crazy and they’re not evil for loving their country.

He doesn’t try to get them to believe completely insane and observable lies like that fighting “climate change” is a rebuke to terrorists, or that what we really need to protect ourselves against terrorists is to disarm law abiding citizens.  And so Trump, though a lot of his ideas are completely insane, benefits from using truth.  At least a little bit of truth.  And it’s likely he’ll get elected on the strength of it.

I’ve made my peace with this.  By tamping down on everyone sane who tried to point out they were out of control, the left has created Trump.

. . .

As for Europe... Europe is further down the road of big lies than we are, and though they’re not as active in social media, they’re getting there.  And the lies they’ve been told are so humongous that it amounts to their elites being at war with their people.

If they’re lucky — very very lucky — there will be one big convulsion, and then things will right themselves, more or less.

The chances of this diminish the longer it takes, the greater the outrage builds, and the more the backlash potential grows.

If the backlash is only against their elites, it won’t be so bad.  But I’m afraid when the backlash comes it will be opposite day.  All the things the elites have tried to sell them on will turn on their head.  There will be real sexism and the real racism will swallow up even thoroughly assimilated writers of Turkish origin.

And the rivers of Europe will once more run red with blood.

There's more at the link.

A few weeks earlier, the Mises Institute published an article by Jeff Deist titled 'PC Is About Control, Not Etiquette'.  Here's an excerpt.  Again, bold, underlined text is my emphasis.

Political correctness is the conscious, designed manipulation of language intended to change the way people speak, write, think, feel, and act, in furtherance of an agenda.

PC is best understood as propaganda, which is how I suggest we approach it. But unlike propaganda, which historically has been used by governments to win favor for a particular campaign or effort, PC is all-encompassing. It seeks nothing less than to mold us into modern versions of Marx’s un-alienated society man, freed of all his bourgeois pretensions and humdrum social conventions.

Like all propaganda, PC fundamentally is a lie. It is about refusing to deal with the underlying nature of reality, in fact attempting to alter that reality by legislative and social fiat. A is no longer A.

. . .

Understand that the PC enforcers are not asking you, they’re not debating you, and they don’t care about your vote. They don’t care whether they can win at the ballot box, or whether they use extralegal means. There are millions of progressives in the US who absolutely would criminalize speech that does not comport with their sense of social justice.

One poll suggests 51 percent of Democrats and 1/3 of all Americans would do just that.

The other side is fighting deliberately and tactically. So realize you’re in a fight, and fight back. Culturally, this really is a matter of life and death.

. . .

PC enforcers seek to divide and atomize us, by class, race, sex, and sexuality. So let’s take them up on it. Let’s bypass the institutions controlled by them in favor of our own. Who says we can’t create our own schools, our own churches, our own media, our own literature, and our own civic and social organizations? Starting from scratch certainly is less daunting than fighting PC on its own turf.

PC is a virus that puts us — liberty loving people — on our heels. When we allow progressives to frame the debate and control the narrative, we lose power over our lives.

. . .

In fact, head Facebook creep Mark Zuckerberg recently was overheard at a UN summit telling Angela Merkel that he would get to work on suppressing Facebook comments by Germans who have the audacity to object to the government’s handling of migrants.

Here’s the Facebook statement:

We are committed to working closely with the German government on this important issue. We think the best solutions to dealing with people who make racist and xenophobic comments can be found when service providers, government, and civil society all work together to address this common challenge.

Chilling, isn’t it? And coming soon to a server near you, unless we all get busy.

Again, more at the link.

Put both articles together, and you have a pretty clear road map of how we got into this mess, why it's persisting, and what might happen if we don't break the shackles of ideological purity and political correctness that others are seeking to impose upon our societies.  It's not a happy thought.

I highly recommend reading both articles in full, thinking about what they say, and then asking ourselves what we can do about it.  It's important.

Peter

The Bra

Inspired by another reader comment, here's cowboy poet Waddie Mitchell.

Oops . . .




Peter

Doofus Of The Day #873

One might say this report achieves the very Nirvana of Doofidity.

An Oregon folk singer plans to leave next week to serenade the Islamic State, and he intends to bring the black-clad barbarians a prayerful message of peace — despite a warning from the State Department that his life could be in danger.

James Twyman, of Portland, Ore., told FoxNews.com he feels a “calling” and believes he can soften the hearts of the Islamist army known for beheading Westerners, throwing gays off buildings and summarily executing innocent women and children.

“It’s going to be pretty powerful,” Twyman said, referring to his plan to have those attending and others around the world sing and pray for peace at the same time. “When people come together and focus on something in a positive way ... there’s scientific evidence that it can change things for the better.”

. . .

Twyman said he will be joined by a large group of Jewish, Muslim and Christian leaders.

“Each one will lead the group in prayer from their religion,” he said. “It’s going to be pretty powerful.”

. . .

Twyman believes he must go, despite the dangers.

“I’m no sort of hero, but I do believe in the power of this.”

There's more at the link.

I expect Mr. Twyman will probably very shortly be too dead to realize that "the power of this" . . . isn't.

Peter

One way to deter bike thieves

Not a bad idea, IMHO.

Dare I say it?  "This is my shocked face . . . "




Peter

The Internet as a surveillance way of life

Bruce Schneier, whom we've met several times in these pages, warns that the "Internet of Things" is becoming an ever-greater threat to our privacy.

Surveillance is the business model of the internet, and the more these companies know about the intimate details of your life, the more they can profit from it. Already there are dozens of companies that secretly spy on you as you browse the internet, connecting your behavior on different sites and using that information to target advertisements. You know it when you search for something like a Hawaiian vacation, and ads for similar vacations follow you around the internet for weeks. Companies like Google and Facebook make an enormous profit connecting the things you write about and are interested in with companies trying to sell you things.

Cross-device tracking is the latest obsession for internet marketers. You probably use multiple internet devices: your computer, your smartphone, your tablet, maybe your internet-enabled television—and, increasingly, “Internet of Things” devices like smart thermostats and appliances. All of these devices are spying on you, but the different spies are largely unaware of each other ... This is where the Internet of Things makes the problem worse. As computers get embedded into more of the objects we live with and use, and permeate more aspects of our lives, more companies want to use them to spy on us without out knowledge or consent.

. . .

We need to have a conversation about the privacy implications of cross-device tracking, but—more importantly—we need to think about the ethics of our surveillance economy. Do we want companies knowing the intimate details of our lives, and being able to store that data forever? Do we truly believe that we have no rights to see the data that's collected about us, to correct data that's wrong, or to have data deleted that's personal or embarrassing? At a minimum, we need limits on the behavioral data that can legally be collected about us and how long it can be stored, a right to download data collected about us, and a ban on third-party ad tracking. The last one is vital: it's the companies that spy on us from website to website, or from device to device, that are doing the most damage to our privacy.

There's more at the link.

I've harped on the subject of privacy more than once in these pages, but I fear it's a losing battle.  Once that genie is out of the bottle, it's very hard to stuff it back in again;  and even if legislation or regulation draws a line, what about the encroachments that have already taken place?  Even if companies are prevented from invading our privacy even more, what about the data they've already gathered?  They're most unlikely to discard it.  I wouldn't be surprised to find that if one country or region passes a law that requires them to do so, they'll simply copy the data to storage in another country or region before the deadline, then use a subsidiary there to access it whenever they wish.  That's not illegal, after all - although I believe it should be.

This is a mess.  I have no idea what the solution is, except for a radical pruning of everything that's gone on so far and a 'clean slate' approach - which is precisely what companies and politicians are not going to permit.  All I can do is load ad blocker software onto every device that will allow it;  set my browser to reject cookies and beacons;  and use browser add-ons such as NoScript and Ghostery to block trackers and other intrusive code.  I recommend the same steps to all my readers.

Peter

What an amazing actor!

I note that Al Sharpton has criticized the Academy Award nominations for including too few people of color.

Actually, I'm wondering why he has never been nominated for an Oscar.  After all, he's been acting the part of a man of faith and a minister of religion for years!

Peter